


Gallifrey, A Very Long Time Ago

by lilyhandmaiden



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode: s07e14 The Name of the Doctor, Gallifrey, Gen, Time Lords and Ladies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-30
Updated: 2013-10-30
Packaged: 2017-12-30 22:21:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1024064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilyhandmaiden/pseuds/lilyhandmaiden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After "The Name of the Doctor" aired, there was a lot of speculation about whether the Clara on Gallifrey was a Time Lady and how that version of events squared with what was described in "The Doctor's Wife." This is my take on Time Lady Clara, the origin of her complicated relationship with the TARDIS, and how she came to save the Doctor on the day he started running.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gallifrey, A Very Long Time Ago

_“Every day starts with the tick of a clock_

_All escapes start with the click of a lock”_

_-_ Matilda the Musical

 

 

_Vworp... vworp... thunk_.

“You stupid cow!” Clarawinoswalladar slammed the Type 40 TARDIS’s roundel shut and kicked it for good measure. This ended up hurting her toes. Quite a lot, actually. As she hopped around the console room, swearing under her breath, the Type 40’s overhead lights flickered. It could have been just another fault in the wiring, but Clarawinoswalladar would swear that the damn thing was _laughing_ at her. Honestly, it was like it thought _she_ was the problem. “I’m just trying to _help_ , you know!” she shouted.

At least the door mechanism worked perfectly, if only because the Type 40 wanted her out. Clarawinoswalladar—TT Capsule maintenance officer, called Clarawin for short—stomped back into the repair shop, and the TARDIS door whooshed shut behind her. She was one year out of the Academy and the junior member of her repair crew, a position she would  hold for a couple hundred years more at least, since her superiors were more likely at this point to die in transtemporal explosive events than to be promoted.

Whereas most of the Citadel on Gallifrey was polished, ornate, the repair shop was cut into the base of the city, and could best be described using words such as “drab” and “poorly lit.” Grey, cylindrical TARDIS capsules lined the grey stone walls, each capsule the same as its neighbor. On Gallifrey, TARDIS chameleon circuits all reset to the basic shell they’d grown into before their first flights—all except the third from the end, which kept flickering between the shape of a Borogovian wabe cabinet and some sort of gardening implement. No one really wanted to go in that one until they figured out what kind of gardening implement it was and where its door might be, for fear of being trapped. Tools clanked into tool boxes as the repair crew packed up for the day, and the musical grinding sound which meant another pilot had left the brakes on faded as TARDISes less recalcitrant than the Type 40 dematerialized back home.

“That one does _not_ like me,” Clarawin muttered to Drax, a fellow mechanic she thought of as one of the decent ones. Unfortunately, the Maintenance Coordinator overheard in passing, and raised one imperious eyebrow.

“You’re correct, Clarawinoswalladar, it does not like you, because it is a machine which is capable of neither ‘like’ nor ‘dislike.’” She looked down her sizeable nose at Clarawin. Unlike the rest of the repair crew, the Maintenance Coordinator wore a cape and high collar of Time Lord office although, to fit in with the setting, they were grey. Probably they would have been ugly on anyone, but the Maintenance coordinator’s general demeanor didn’t help. She practically oozed pride of rank, in spite of not having much rank to be proud of.

“You’re right, of course, Maintenance Coordinator,” Clarawin said.

“And what is your report on this TARDIS? You’ve been working on it all week.”

Clawawin straightened. “Yes, Maintenance Coordinator. It’s a Type 40—”

“A _Type 40_? Then I don’t know why you’ve bothered! We haven’t had a Type 40 here in a decade; most of them are decommissioned by now.”

“Yes, Maintenance Coordinator, but this one’s in surprisingly decent shape for its age. I’ve managed to fix nearly everything but the navigation. That has been giving me some trouble—and it’s not only my fault this time, I swear. But I’ve stabilized the stabilizers and rewired the whole console. The chameleon circuit’s wearing down, but it should be good for another century or so. It’s all old, but it’s serviceable.”

“You’ve been wasting time, Clarawinoswalladar—yours and everyone else’s.” The Maintenance Coordinator shook her head. “This model’s ancient. It’ll never run again.”

“But I’ve been working so—”

“I hope you didn’t put any new parts in. You’ll just have to take them out. This thing belongs in a museum, or if they don’t want it, it’s for the scrap yard.”

“With respect, I don’t think—”

“This is _standard procedure_ , Clarawinoswalladar. You know that.” Her tone could only be described as _cautionary_.

“Yes, Maintenance Coordinator. My apologies.”

When she had passed, Clarawin aimed another kick of pure frustration at the Type 40’s shell. “See what you get?! Idiotic piece of—argh!”

“She’s right about one thing, you know,” Drax said, his lips quirking into an amused half smile. “It doesn’t care how much you shout. They’re sophisticated computers, and pretty autonomous, but if you dismantle ‘em, they’re still just gears and wheels and quantum reflectors.”

“Yeah, but still.” Clarawin went to lean beside Drax on the nearby railing. “You hear stories about computers developing intelligences and personalities if they’ve been around long enough. And this one certainly has.”

“Too bad it’s flown its last, eh?” He nudged her. “The trouble it’s given you, you should be glad you don’t have to tamper with it anymore.”

“Yeah. ‘Course I am. I said it was about finished when it came in, only, I don’t know, it seemed like a challenge.”

After a second, Drax stood and pulled on his jacket. “I’m off. See you later.”

“Bye!” Clarawin waited until Drax was around the corner before she walked back up to the Type 40 and thumped it once more with her fist. After all its difficulties, it had had to draw her boss’s ire besides. “Scrap box,” she muttered. “This is your fault, you know.” She could have imagined it, but its hum seemed to get softer, and it sounded somehow... sad. Without knowing quite why she did it, she touched the shell gently with her open palm and said, “Sorry.”

Of course, the Time Lords had no proof that the TARDISes were alive, but despite what the Maintenance Coordinator said, there was the very definite sense that they weren’t just appliances. The more the authorities insisted that this was not the case, the more Clarawin could sense their own growing uncertainty. They had been living with TARDIS technology now long enough to doubt that they fully understood its effects. Among those who worked closely with the vehicles, occasionally one would voice an uneasy feeling that, although they had built the TARDISes piece by piece, if they were to take an old model like the Type 40 apart, they might find more than they had put in.

It was impossible to deny that Time Lords often bonded with their TARDISes, gave them nicknames, called them “she,” and became despondent if their capsules had to be, not scrapped, not trashed, but _retired_. As she listened to the mournful hum of the Type 40, Clarawin’s mind turned to the field outside the capital which Time Lords called the TARDIS graveyard, where the old and broken-down TARDISes, stripped of useable parts, were not so much dumped as placed, with respect. There, their Huon and Artron energy leaked out as they depowered in a process that seemed so much like dying that that was what everyone called it. Officially this was done because it would be too dangerous to dispose of an object containing a subset of the Eye of Harmony lightly, and this was certainly right. But nobody went on to ask what seemed like such an obvious question to Clarawin: who knew what something so dimensionally improbable and immensely powerful as the Eye could do over time to living metal and a computerized brain?

After all, it was supposed to be simple exposure to the Untempered Schism which had gradually transformed mere Gallifreyans into Time Lords. Even now, gazing into the source of that power haunted the Time Lord children, inspired them, made them go mad. Clarawin understood this more than most; she herself had looked into the Schism for seconds only, and look what it had done to her.

At eight years old, Clarawin watched  her peers approach the Untempered Schism, and one by one they burst into tears, lit up in awe, or ran like hell. But then her turn came, and she could never be quite sure, afterward, what had happened. Only it seemed that all of time and space unfolded before her, and suddenly...

She didn’t know where she was. All she knew was that she was running. It was like she was breaking into a million pieces, living a thousand lives in a thousand places. Over and over she was born, she lived, she died. In some way, she was everywhere at once, running every second, just to find... something. Someone? She was blown about on the Time Winds like a leaf, and she didn’t think she’d ever land.

But then, abruptly, she did land, on her hands and knees in the dirt before the Untempered Schism, and as they led her away she slowly came to realize that all of those lifetimes had passed in no more than a minute, and she was Clarawinoswalladar, and she was home on Gallifrey. Had never left.

Would, almost certainly, never leave.

Although she understood the capsules’ operation perfectly and had, according to her professors, an excellent grasp of the temporal theory, her reaction to the Untempered Schism meant that she’d been deemed unsuitable for training to actually pilot a TARDIS. Not that she minded, really. Not much, anyway. Not most of the time.

Oh, of course she dreamed, sometimes, about just getting into one of the ships in her charge and taking off—next stop everywhere. But then that dizzying fear from her childhood, from the Schism, would wash over her like a wave—the fear of being lost, alone out there in time and space, not knowing where she was, and no one to come and find her. The thought made her shiver.

Clarawin sighed as she locked up the old Type 40 for the last time, picked up her tools, and turned for the door. That was when she spotted movement in the shadows of the broken TARDISes. She’d thought everyone else had left, and that she was alone in the closed-up repair shop, but moving furtively from capsule to capsule was a white-haired man in a black coat. He must have entered without a sound. His lack of uniform meant that he was not one of the crew, and all the pilots were gone, so he was unauthorized. The way he glanced from side to side made it clear that he did not wish to be seen. Clarawin looked to the nearest wall control panel and saw the flashing light indicating that a break-in had triggered the door alarm. She shrank back and reached into her tool kit, looking for something sharp or heavy. Slowly he was coming closer, stopping at random TARDISes along the way.

It was the man who called himself the Doctor, she realized, though she couldn’t remember seeing his face before. Strange, that. The official channels had tried to hush up what had happened, but there had been whispers nonetheless. What was more, Clarawin could see now that he was not alone. Hovering behind him was a girl in her teens—her first set of teens by the looks of it, practically a baby. She must have been the girl who’d come up with the TARDIS acronym which had caught on so quickly—Clarawin could remember it being said that she had an “unusual mind,” whatever that meant. The two of them moved down the row of repair-shop capsules, sliding their hands over the front panels, trying the doors, searching for one that would open. Clarawin drew further back into the shadows and wondered what to do. She knew that she _should_ call for help, of course, but...

_What kind of madman would steal a faulty TARDIS?_

The answer came to her: a desperate one. An adventurer who’d had just about enough. And she couldn’t blame him, not deep down, not after everything, for wanting to take the girl and escape.

If she hadn’t been pressed up against the Type 40 like that, wallowing in indecision, she might not have heard something in its inner workings click. It struck Clarawin as a very deliberate sort of click.

It only took a second to realize: the daft blasted thing had unlocked herself. _Itself_. Clarawin tried, but could not manage to convince herself that a gear had coincidentally slipped.

“Oh,” she said. “ _Really?_ ” The ship had picked up an anticipatory hum. “ _Oh._ ”

Clarawin thought quickly, as only a Time Lord can. The fact was that she took pride in her work, and she did not want this obstinate ship to get scrapped tomorrow if she could prevent it. Of course, there was the chance it wouldn’t operate, in which case she’d caught the Doctor in the act of theft. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. But the Type 40 seemed to have a better idea of what it was about that she did, on the whole, and just this once she was of a mind to let it have its way.

“Well, it’s a perfect match,” she muttered. “You’re _both_ mad.”

She peered around the Type 40’s shell to see that the Doctor and the girl had found the neighboring TARDIS unlocked, too. Which was strange, because the Maintenance Coordinator was usually so particular about these things.

_This is wrong_. The thought landed in her head as lightly as a leaf, without her even having to think it. _No. This is wrong._ The timelines from this point were all so complex, crackling out and splintering like lightning, like nothing she’d ever experienced before, and she didn’t know (out of childhood nightmare, her own voice screamed, _I don’t know where I am_ ), but maybe this was what it felt like when the Web of Time was tampered with, only how could that be? Here, on Gallifrey?

There was no more time to wonder. The triggered door alarm meant that security was coming. The girl had already stepped inside the wrong TARDIS, and the Doctor was set to follow. She had to help him. All of her doubt had vanished as soon as he’d opened that other TARDIS door, because she knew, now—it was him. When she’d looked into the Schism, she’d seen him, again and again and again. She didn’t understand it, but since that day, she’d been waiting for this moment: the day she would save the Doctor. Clarawinoswalladar stepped into the light.

“Doctor...” He didn’t seem to hear her at first, and she was seized by a fear that he never would. She called his name again. “Doctor?”

This time he turned.

“Yes?” The Doctor’s voice was sharp, abrupt, impatient. “What is it? What do you want?”

“Sorry. But you’re about to make a very big mistake.” The pressure inside her head lightened suddenly, and she felt more herself. The grey repair shop was clear and bright around her. She could see that the Doctor was intrigued, and she smiled. “Don’t steal that one, steal this one. The navigation system’s knackered, but you’ll have much more fun.”

The Doctor raised an imperious eyebrow. “ _Steal?_ Hm! _I_ , steal? No, I am _borrowing_ a TARDIS, which I fully intend to return one day, of course, when I come back!” But she was surprised to see a twinkle of mischief in his eyes which belied his words. She’d never met a Time Lord like this before. Beneath that sharp, wrinkled face, he was a boy on the brink of the universe. A boy like that needed the right kind of toy.

“Well, then _borrow_ this one. It’s a Type 40; they don’t make them like this anymore. And they’ll never trace you. Seriously.”

“But this one’s already unlocked, and I haven’t the time—” The Type 40’s door slid open at his touch, and he fell silent. He took a step inside and brushed his fingers over the console, which Clarawin at her most optimistic could only call “retro,” and murmured, “Why, it’s beautiful. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever known.”

With almost startling agility considering his aging body, he bolted to the door and called, “Over here, my dear, I’ve found another unlocked which will be much more suitable. Bring the bag! Hurry!”

“Coming, Grandfather!” The girl darted past Clarawin and into the Type 40.

A feeling of guilty irresponsibility suddenly rose up to temper the heady sense of _rightness_ about all this. A TARDIS was a bitch for one or two to pilot—particularly, if she had to guess, this one. And with the faulty navigation, they’d be sure to not just evade the Time Lords, but get thoroughly lost. She started to feel that tightness in her chest which came with thinking about the time-space Vortex. _I don’t know where I am_. _Help, please, I don’t know where I am!_

But of course, it occurred to her then, she couldn’t be lost if she wasn’t alone. If this girl got lost, the Doctor would find her. The Doctor could tell her where she was. Who she was. Clarawin felt fully alive for the first time in ages, a universe of possibilities tingling at her fingertips. The stars beckoned to her like never before, and impulsively she asked, “Can I come with you?”

“No, no, good lady, far too dangerous. You’d best stay put, him?” Absorbed in adjusting the controls and setting coordinates, he spoke offhandedly, as though he’d already forgotten she was there. She didn’t point out that what was best was relative at this point, since she was probably already in serious trouble for aiding and abetting.

The granddaughter offered an apologetic smile. “Maybe another time.”

“You’d better remember that offer.” Clarawin heard shouting at the repair shop door, and the sound of running feet. She was definitely going to be in trouble. There might even be an inquest. _Oh, well_. She felt reckless, invincible. _The repair shop was boring, anyway_. “The guards are coming,” she warned. “You’d better run.”

_Perhaps he is more clever than mad, after all,_ she thought, _to get away from all this._

“Close the door, please, my dear,” he called across the console to the girl.

The doors shut just as the guards reached her. They were swarming around now, but it was too late.

“Run, you clever boy,” Clarawin whispered as the Type 40, for once in its miserable existence, dematerialized perfectly, “and remember.”

~fin~


End file.
